Endings and Beginings
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Zack Allen sees an abberation. Set at the end of Sleeping in the Light.


"Endings and Beginnings" Time: Right after Sleeping in Light  
  
Fire burned in his memory where as only debris remained. He'd been urged to leave and let people handle it, yet he'd stayed. So far he couldn't tear himself away from this place. He'd been away too long already. Was it only six months ago he returned? It felt like six years. This was the only home he knew, more home than Earth had been even. Here he'd had a job, a life, friends and so much else, making it that much harder to watch the place go up in flames.  
  
He watched the collection and destruction of the most important place he'd ever worked and lived. It now existed only as millions of particles of waste outside the windows he looked out of. The ceremonies had been long, formal and tear filled.  
  
Babylon 5 was gone in fire and destruction, but not in chaos, confusion, or death.  
  
It will belong now only to history books and tales of the foundation of the Interstellar Alliance. With the ache in his chest, one that even overpowered the ache of his hip, he feel this goodbye more strongly than any he have ever been apart of. A true ending to so many years of hard work, laughter, tears, pain and living side by side, forging new ways.  
  
Zack Allan, last of the last to leave this place, watched as the ships left, as his ship left, wondering how this place could ever be forgotten.  
  
"It never will be." A voice said from behind him and he whirled around to find a woman sitting on his bed. One he would also never forget. "It will live on in the songs sung by this place forever, in a million voices stronger than any force could ever destroy or silence."  
  
He licked his lips, giving the aberration on his bed a long look. She looked to be barely over the age of thirty. Young again, with pale white skin, soft light freckles and bright hair the colours of the sunset. Her clothes were the colors he had once long ago associated with her, blacks and greens. But her eyes, deep orbs of copper were older than time. "Are you--?"  
  
"A dream? A hallucination? A memory?" She smiled the smile that meant she had a secret, one she usually wasn't going to share just tease him with. She pulled her legs up and curled them under herself, then laced her fingers together and left her hands balanced at an angle on her knees. "Maybe a little of each and maybe none of them at all."  
  
"You're supposed to be dead," he said in one breath, almost afraid if he didn't get it out the words would clog his throat along with the fear that this was a dream and that it was real all at once.  
  
"The rumors of my demise are often wrong," The red head said, the amusement causing small lines to appear and then smooth at the edges of her eyes. She seemed so young, especially in comparison to the man who was standing opposed to her. He was aged well aside from the ailment in his hip, a long past injury. "You used to know that."  
  
"How did you get here?" Zack asked, looking around the room suspiciously. The room was dim and all but untouched saved for small things. One chair held rumpled sleep clothing, the table had a book and a Comm link on it, and his bed table had his back up PPG resting on it.  
  
"I'm not actually here," Lyta replied, as her face drew thoughtful and dark. She held out a hand for him, her palm upturned as if asking him to take it and join her on the bed. "I'm far away in a distant place you once knew well."  
  
Zack stared at her longingly. There was just a catch. Staring at her did bring back something or rather clips of something. Things he couldn't place, couldn't get to focus, or remember clearly. It was like someone had smeared the images so they weren't recognizable. Her expression, expectation and asking, with her hand held out wrenched at his heart. He couldn't remember her ever having done it and he'd wanted to be so close to her long ago.  
  
He sat down on the other corner of the bed, wincing when his hip gave a twinge reaching the right position, and taking her hand. The moment he'd taken her hand though he'd forgotten about the pain. Warmth seemed to spiral up through his arm from her hand, slowly cascading across his entire body. He jumped out of surprise, yanking at his hand, which she held firm and searching out her face in surprise. Her expression was one of surprise and sadness. Her lips were drawn up and her eyes seemed pricked with tears that hadn't fallen.  
  
"You're in pain."  
  
"Not so much now," he said, adding a laugh to cover his shock. "What'd you just do?"  
  
"Not even half of what I should have done so long ago," the telepath replied somberly as her gaze fell to the bed spread. He hadn't the vaguest clue what she was thinking. He never had, but he wanted to help. She seemed troubled and sad, and he hadn't any dea why, but still he wanted to make it better.  
  
She tilted her head and looked up at him suddenly, her eyes piercing his soul with the depth of sadness held deep inside them. "Come home?"  
  
"Home? What?" Zack said startled, which caused his to feel skittish. His mind kept seeming to hit a wall, for a second he'd almost understand what she said each time she spoke and then it would become thin and transparent and fled from him leaving his confused and on edge. "No, I wasn't going home. I'm on the way to Centauri Prime with Emperor Vir. He offered me a job."  
  
Lyta nodded slowly, her expression becoming even harder to read, almost blank, but somehow he knew she was just becoming resigned, letting go of something. He wasn't sure how he knew, he just suddenly knew that was what she was doing. She reached out after a second with her other hand to touch his cheek, stopping before touching it, and then touched it. "I should have expected so. You never were one to just lay down and get a peaceful life. You needed to be doing something somewhere."  
  
The ex-security chief was praying that if this wasn't real, that it wouldn't end soon. The soft touch of her hand against his cheek was causing his body to warm slightly. She was acting more affectionate and resigned in reaction than he had any knowledge to make sense of. "I-"  
  
"Shh," she said, a finger sliding to press over his lips, causing his throat to go dry and a shiver to go through him. He almost went stone still when she leaned over and kissed him.  
  
Bells and alarms went off inside his head. All of the reasons that it wasn't possible for her to be sitting in this room, talking to him, were fading against the pressure of her lips against his. It wasn't awe inspiring passion, for a moment he even felt a wave of desolation that passed through him and vanished, before it ended and he was staring at her in amazement and shock.  
  
One of her cheeks had the trail of a tear already fallen on it and the other held a small bejeweled tear drop still falling across her cheek. She braved a smile that he somehow knew was for his benefit, as the finiteness of her image started to fade. "I'm sorry for disturbing you."  
  
~*~*~  
  
"No! Wait!"  
  
He shot up from his bed, darkness surrounding him, only to come down harder as he fell back on his pillow. It had been a dream. Just a dream. He sighed as he compounded earlier confusion with overwhelming frustration. Lyta Alexander, the woman he'd loved from the moment he'd set eyes on her, was dead. No amount of hope or prayer was ever going to change that.  
  
Dead was dead.  
  
Getting up and going to the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and dried it with a towel. It wasn't until he was half way back to his bed that he realized it wasn't hurting to walk at all. He called for the lights to come on. He moved his leg a few different way bracing himself for the waves of pain that usually came and blinked in surprise when they didn't come, when nothing at all happened.  
  
Sitting down on the bed he remember the warmth that had coursed through him touching her. He pressed his fingers at the wound, expecting stabbing pain, and received nothing. He looked around the room, trying to find a reasonable explanation for what was happening. It seemed to be like grasping at straws. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be. She was dead.  
  
Wasn't she?  
  
He opened the bed table drawer and pulled out a small 2D picture and looked at it. It was two people who were very young, both with expression of happiness. One of them himself, much younger, and the other a young red headed woman who looked rarely like she ever else did; happy, both laughing at some now unknown joke they had shared.  
  
He reached out to stroke the picture of her with a finger on his other hand, before crushing it to his chest and looking around the room again.  
  
Could it have been real?  
  
Was it possible? 


End file.
